Profiles

Camille Brown of Gentle Mind is Here to Stay

The entertainment industry has always been trying to find people that possess that elusive X factor. There have been countless television reality shows about it. The one thing that everyone forgets, though, is that you can’t manufacture star power. It’s a combination of many things that are honestly pretty intangible. A wonderful example of this is local singer/songwriter Camille Brown. Camille and her band Gentle Mind haven’t been performing for very long in Vancouver but they are already turning heads.

Music Profile | Sleepy Sun

“Some of the best pieces of works are the ones made through extremely challenging times.”  Bret Constantino, lead vocalist for San Francisco-based Sleepy Sun, is recalling the process of recording the band’s fifth and newly released album, Private Tales. “The record was frustrating in many ways but our persistence paid off,” he says on the phone from his home in the Bay Area.

The Next Chapter of Wolf Parade

There's not too much info out there on Wolf Parade's new album just yet, but the mostly B.C.-based indie rock pack's first full-length in seven years is nearly complete by the time ION reaches drummer Arlen Thompson at home in Nanaimo. He'd been out tracking at Seattle's Robert Lang Studios earlier in the week, and judging by the band's Insta pic of a well-placed microphone, a pair of bongos, and an exquisitely crusty, spiritually attuning amethyst, the sessions have been epic.

Music Profile | Louise Burns

Despite appearing in the new Beaches remake as a nightclub pianist playing behind Frozen-favourite Idina Menzel, Louise Burns isn't racking up any credit for her acting skills on IMDB. That's even more tragic once you factor in another current onscreen role, fending off flying ghost sharks and snipping off her own five-foot tongue in a music video for "Storms," the first single from her Young Mopes LP.

Music Profile | Cate Le Bon

About an hour ahead of ION's phone call with Cate Le Bon, the artist unveiled a video for "Rock Pool," the title track from her soon-to-be-released new EP for Drag City. Saturated in reality-distorting washes of Technicolor aquamarine and magenta, the short film finds Le Bon exploring the sand and pebble beachscape of Wales' Southerndown beach while wearing a towering, construction paper top hat.

Music Profile | Marching Church

Elias Rønnenfelt’s latest Marching Church album is like a dark, meandering winter's dream. The sound is a lot more cohesive than his previous two albums but still true to Rønnenfelt's abstract sound composition. Marching Church was originally a solo project, but now he has ramped up the production with a full-out backing band, that serves to enhance his dramatic vocals even further.

In your latest album "Telling it Like is" you have a more dark unified sound, why did you decide to head in this direction for your latest album?

Music Profile | Beach Slang

There's no hyperbole to the title of Beach Slang's second album, A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings. The band itself is comprised of guys well out of their adolescent times, frontman James Alex himself already into his 40s, but the in-song emotions pushed to the red between washes of punk distortion and pop melody are equivalent to the raw, fresh feelings coursing through the young at heart.

The Bee Gee's Barry Gibb Drops Solo Album

Barry Gibb is an icon. Not only is he one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed songwriters of all time, but with his brothers, Robin and Maurice in the Bee Gees, he came to define the music of an entire generation. Here we are just over 13 years after the band hung up their polyester jumpsuits, following the passing of Maurice in 2003 and Robin in 2012, with Barry getting ready to release his first solo album of new material, In The Now.

Pages